


Assorted Kink Meme Fills

by farevenasdecidedtouse



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: F/F, Hatesex, Humiliation, M/M, Modern AU, Pickup Artistry, Ritual Sex, Size Kink, Unrequited Lust, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2018-07-18 22:32:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7333288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farevenasdecidedtouse/pseuds/farevenasdecidedtouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miscellaneous short pieces written for <a href="http://tge-kink.dreamwidth.org">tge_kink</a>, ranging from the fluffy to the filthy to the cracktastic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Csoru/Csethiro - Hatesex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _So, Csethiro and Csoru don't like each other. At all. And their fathers are both insistent that they should be friends, according to Csethiro even commanding it at times. Obviously this should result in a lot of bitterly antagonistic UST and then hatesex._

The summer party of Ceredada and Celehada had adjourned from the musty, unaired halls of Eheloee to the nearby town of Cethoro, leaving behind two of their number as well as a skeleton staff tasked with catering to the whims of the two. Csethiro, uninterested at the prospect of wandering muddy backwater streets for some hours, had thus been stranded there with _her_ in the shadow of an oncoming storm. She had ridden her mare as far as she dared along the overgrown mountain paths till fat drops of rain from the upper branches forced her back into the lodge where she ran through every solitary sword drill she could think of in the cavernous and dusty main hall. Adjourning to the upstairs parlor she found Csoru draped across a couch, an ignored novel in one hand and the other flung over her face in a manner slightly too picturesque to be uncalculated. Her head snapped up with a delicate noise of earrings and hair combs as Csethiro entered, only for her interest to be replaced by the usual vague distaste. "Has the party returned?" she asked.  
  
"No, and if the storm worsens I would hardly expect them before tomorrow. Those switchbacks seemed like to wash out at the slightest provocation," Csethiro replied, sinking into a brocade chair that sent up ribbons of stale dust to mingle with the errant mud spatters on her bodice and sleeves.  
  
Csoru's nose wrinkled. "Must thou inflict thine own slovenliness on the furniture?"  
  
"Its state can hardly be worsened by a few dabs of mud," Csethiro said with a sardonic arch of her brow, running a finger over an unpatched rent in the arm's upholstery.  
  
"I suppose this must be why the Ceredada apartments make these lodgings resemble the Alcethmaret itself," Csoru observed acidly.  
  
Csethiro was on her feet before she could remind herself how little she cared for any of Csoru's opinions. "If the reduced conditions of my family offend thee so then thou art entirely welcome to petition thy father to allow thee to avoid them wherever possible."  
  
"How can I?" Csoru sprang up as well, the tensions burgeoning ever since their arrival pitching her toward Csethiro like the tilting deck of a ship. "I would still see thee in thy mother’s old things and wearing a _sword_ like some guttersnipe boy playing at soldiers at every salon and party thy father forces thee to." One elegantly manicured hand caught at the lapel of Csethiro's riding jacket, ostensibly to inspect the shoddy quality but plucking with such force that with a rip of worn seams the fabric gave under Csoru's dainty fingers.  
  
Csethiro froze, then in an instant had Csoru pinned against the wall, her own modestly-built frame holding Csoru pinned like a ferret with a sleek, squirming mouse. Too furious for further words the two struggled in silent frustration, Csethiro pinning Csoru's wrists at her side, Csoru writhing, kicking and attempting to bite or headbutt whatever portion of Csethiro was available until her struggles took on a strange lassitude, one Csethiro remembered well from their childish encounters on the verge of womanhood. Experimentally she leaned forward and was rewarded with the grip of Csoru's silk-clad thighs to either side of hers, their crux meeting the broad muscle through layers upon layers of fabric with a desperate rutting motion that suggested a lack of such contact for some time. Csethiro leaned forward only to feel Csoru's teeth sink savagely into her lower lip. She cried out and let go in shock only to be pulled into a vicious clash of lips more another bite than a kiss, feeling Csoru's arms twine around her neck in an attempt to bridge the difference in their heights.  
  
"Not here," Csethiro panted, breaking the kiss with more of a shove to Csoru's shoulders than may have been strictly necessary. With a small, curt nod Csoru took her hand, leading her from the parlor into the adjoining bedroom she had apparently occupied on visits to Eheloee since childhood. She fell back onto the bed among piles of discarded, rustic dresses under Csethiro's rain-chilled, questing hands, ruching up the frills of her thoroughly impractical skirt even as Csoru sought to free her small, full breasts from the confines of her tightly buttoned bodice. Ignoring the invitation of nipples peaked stiffly despite the nearby fireplace that blazed against the cool mountain air, Csethiro bared one leg under her skirt, sliding it against Csoru's already blazing-hot slit. "Rub it," she commanded, and with a poisonous look Csoru did, quivering and cursing her way toward a mounting climax. Pitching herself forward to keep her thigh in contact with Csoru's pearl, Csethiro rewarded her with the first joints of two fingers slid into her damp slit and was rewarded with a shuddering cry as Csoru, trembling like the leaves that shivered in the rain outside the window, tightened around her with the force of a vise. Unable to quite suppress a brief shriek that Csethiro prayed the staff hadn't managed to hear, Csoru rode the barely-penetrating fingers to a shivering halt. Csethiro allowed her no time to catch her breath for a new set of jibes before moving to straddle her face, skirts around her waist, thighs pinning her head in place.  
  
"Thou knowest the way," she commanded, and with a familiar glare that Csethiro could just see over the muddy blue fabric clutched in her hands Csoru delicately extended her tongue to trace a ginger trail over the flaw in her mound. Csethiro rewarded her with a free hand around the soft rise of one breast, tweaking the nipple harder than may have been strictly necessary only to be rewarded with a small, incoherent noise that she near-immediately muffled with throbbing, eager flesh against Csoru's lips. With an indignant exclamation that sent tremors through Csethiro's core, Csoru's lips encircled the aching nub of her desire and began to suck, tongue stroking it up and down with a finesse that sent shocks like galvanism through her entire body. _Hardly so out of practice as I thought thee, then_ , Csethiro reflected, the thought of Csoru’s head between some other pretty young courtier’s thighs making her ears twitch and provoking hissed curses that beaded on her lips like the dew of arousal that pooled on her lower ones to be lapped up by Csoru's eager tongue. Still stranded on the verge, caught between the disgust and desire that had informed their passionate arguments and subsequent entanglements since their childhoods, Csethiro buried her hand cruelly hard in the luxuriant crown of Csoru’s braids, drawing her mouth in a surprised, outraged ring around the swell of her mound.

With a curse of anger as much as satisfaction Csethiro climaxed with a hand buried in Csoru’s hair and her name on her lips, thighs crushing Csoru’s ears enough to produce an outraged cry but not enough to still her tongue until Csethiro shakily straightened, leveraging herself off of the bed to compose her disheveled clothing. The torn riding jacket still hung crooked from her shoulders, lapel dangling like a wilting corsage, and she tucked it under the fold of the breast. Csoru pushed herself up on her elbows and cried out suddenly at the smears of mud from the hem of Csethiro’s skirts now transferred to the celadon lace-and-silk front of her bodice. “How dost thou expect me to explain this to my girl?” she demanded, hands framing her still-bared breasts and the soiling of the fabric beneath.  
  
“Canst think of that when thou hast her repair my coat,” Csethiro replied. The article in question hit Csoru’s chest in an undifferentiated ball and she clutched it to herself momentarily before tossing it aside with visible impatience.  
  
"An thou treatest me less than entirely disagreeably I _may_ have her do so before the end of this excursion. Purely in the spirit of charity," Csoru said with a sniff.  
  
Csethiro, halfway through turning on her heel, paused in her step. "Would an hour with the device meant to expend my energy more appropriately than sparring do for recompense?"  
  
Csoru's eyes widened, clearly against her better judgement. "Hast such a thing here with thee?"  
  
Blinking away the image of Csoru writhing on the borrowed upstairs bed with the patent vibrator jutting from between her tender lower lips, Csethiro completed her turn, striding purposefully away. "An _thou_ deignest to be less disagreeable I may show thee the workings of it myself."


	2. Maia/Cala/Beshelar - Unseen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There's a reason nothing is worn under the keb. There's also a reason Maia picked Cala and Beshelar as his two attendants for the pre-coronation ritual. We believe you can guess the reason at this point. But, in case we must spell it out: It's not meditation that Maia is doing in that underground chamber. And Cala and Beshelar don't just leave him alone for most of the night._

_Csetheio Caireizhasan, hear me._  
  
The firm touch of the fingers gliding up his arm under the long sleeve of the keb surely must have come from Beshelar, Maia thought, only to note the fineness of the bones and the softness of the skin as those same fingers began to trace light patterns in the sensitive skin at the crook of his elbows. The more tentative hands shaping the bony angles of his shoulders, then, would be an understandably reticent Beshelar.  
  
_Csetheio Caireizhasan, see me._  
  
'Not protocol,' Csevet had told him when pressed, 'but tradition.' In light of Chavar's initial choice of attendants Maia was unsure whether he ought to have been more offended at the intended slight of attendants who could not complete such a legitimizing tradition, or disgusted at the thought that Chavar might have intended him to do just that with a complete stranger and his own (and despised) cousin. His lack of surety was compounded by the warm, ragged breath near his ear, the stroke of calloused fingers from the side of his jaw down along his collarbone.  
  
_Cstheio Caireizhasan, know me._  
  
He had given them the choice of tradition, even after defying Chavar by choosing them as attendants, but the fear that duty outweighed choice had lain on him since the first step into darkness. Worse, his own betrayal had been complete the moment he had felt the first brush of skin on his and his body had responded in kind, leaving him whimperingly, rigidly aroused between his superlatively dutiful servants and their mirror-image attentions. Cala, sitting nearly astride his hips, feathering light trails down his chest interspersed with rougher grasping, once catching at Maia's nipples so hard as to rip a wordless cry from Maia's throat. At his back, Beshelar, tracing the contours of his shoulder blades, the hollow of his back, the jut of his hip bones, with enough confidence now that every shuddering gasp it provoked was almost enough to erase the image of his disgust and disapproval from earlier hours burned into Maia's mind's eye, drawing him back like a shock of icy water from a release that might have allowed his humiliated desire an end.  
  
_Csetheio Caireizhasan, hear me._  
  
The thought of the acknowledgement of a cold and dispassionate goddess did not comfort, but gave a sort of equilibrium to the haze of guilt and arousal that felt near to tearing his mind in two. The keb's fabric whispered over his thighs and up around his waist, he felt a soft, damp pressure near the crux of his legs, (surely not a kiss?) and then Cala's thin lips were on him, drawing over the head of his cock and inexorably down the shaft for the longest moment of bliss that Maia had ever known.  
  
"Cstheio Caireizhasan, see me." Only with a momentary pause of the wet heat of Cala's mouth did Maia realize that he had spoken aloud, but the next rhythmic draw of his lips coupled with the stroke of Beshelar's hands over his bared thighs drew the mantra from him as surely as if the words had been forcibly ripped from his throat. "Cstheio Caireizhasan, know me. Cstheio Caireizhasan, hear me."  
  
One slender mazeise hand gently cupped his tightening sac, almost enough to distract from the pressure of that ardent mouth until Maia felt the head of his cock brush the back of Cala's throat. "Cstheio Caireizhasan, see me," he felt himself half-moan. Every throb of pleasure seemed to wrench the words from him like a confession extracted under the sweetest possible torture, baring him more fully to the Lady of Stars than he had ever intended or hoped to be. "Cstheio Caireizhasan, know me. Cstheio Caireizhasan, hear me. Cstheio Caireizhasan, see me. Cstheio Caireizhasan - "  
  
Behind him he felt Beshelar draw closer to him, the heat of his warrior's frame palpable in the cool dampness of the chamber, and with a belated shock Maia felt the press of the armsman's arousal against his bared lower back. Half-collapsing back against the bulwark of Beshelar's chest he felt himself taken almost by surprise by the climax that felt sucked forcibly from him with each lingering draw of Cala's mouth along his length. Almost without control, almost without shame he thrust forward again and again, feeling an eager contraction of Cala's throat for every jet of his seed, on and on until he lay more supported than not in Beshelar's arms, breath ragged, eyes focused blankly on the darkness above him.  
  
"Forgive me." The sound of his own voice in the still chamber was strange enough to his own ears that Maia only belatedly realized his mistake. "Us. Forgive us."  
  
"There is nothing to forgive, Serenity." In the darkness, the gentleness of Cala's voice was sufficient that Maia could almost have believed him. Behind him Beshelar shifted slightly, drawing attention once again to the still-rigid cock straining against his breeches, and ( _Cstheio Caireizhasan, know me_ ) all doubt flew from his mind, routed only partially by his own selfishness. Trembling with aftershocks that presaged the renewal of desire, Maia closed his eyes to the darkness once again and reached out to his nohecharei, surrendering himself to pure sound and sensation.


	3. Vedero + Tethimar + Csevet - "Eshevis Tethimar: Pickup Artist"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Oh my god, [Tethimar] totally is an MRA/PUA type! I knew I hated him on sight."_
> 
>  
> 
> _""Ugh god the new emperor is a total incel beta letting his sister ride the cock carousel instead of giving her to me. Probably intimidated by my supreme alpha-ness. Maintain frame, Tethimada, maintain frame!"_

"You're a big girl, aren't you?"  
  
Vedero's gaze flicked around the small smoking enclosure, population herself, the built elf who had just spoken, and two goblin guys sharing an e-cig across the patio. "Sorry?" she asked, hoping that she hadn't heard what she'd thought she'd just heard.  
  
"Oh, you don't have to apologize. Healthy chicks need love too." Cold, intense blue eyes crept their way up and down Vedero's 6'1 frame and she resisted the urge to pull her white UoA hoodie closer around her. Past the brim of the guy's fedora she could see the door back inside and suddenly longed for the headachily loud club interior she'd come outside to escape.  
  
"Do I know you?" she asked, then mentally kicked herself at the opening she'd given him.  
  
The flicker of triumph in his eyes told her he'd been waiting for it. "If we had and you'd asked me that, I'd be disappointed. But I'd remember you if we had, so I'm not. Eshevis Tethimar," he said, extending a hand. Vedero shook it as perfunctorily as possible, noticing clearly how his fingers trailed over her hand just a little too long on release. "What's your name, or can I call you Statuesque?"  
  
"Vedero." The two goblins walked back inside, neither of them catching her hopeful gaze from their own involved conversation. Vedero felt like a cornered animal, particularly as Eshevis's hand came to rest on the wall inches from her shoulder. "Excuse me, I need to find my friends," she said with a stride forward she hoped looked decisive.  
  
One strong hand clasped her upper arm in a grip just short of viselike. "Oh, now I've pissed you off. I'm so sorry." His voice sounded contrite enough that she could have believed it, leaving aside how much she would have cared in the first place. "Can I buy you a drink to make it up to you?"  
  
"You imply I'm fat, you have the nerve to hit on me after that, and now you're trying to get me drunk?"  
  
"What? I didn't say you were fat! Come on, let me apologize. Please." His grip on her arm didn't let up and Vedero started to struggle in earnest. Was the bouncer close enough to hear her if she screamed? Would anyone care?  
  
"Hey. Uh, your boyfriend's looking for you." A new voice cut in through the pound of the music from inside. Vedero whipped her head around to see a put-together looking elf about her age standing in the doorway with a hand on her free arm. At the word "boyfriend" Eshevis let go of her arm like it was a hot pan only to almost instantly regroup, eyes narrowing.  
  
"This isn't your problem, _fox,_ " he said in a low, menacing voice.  
  
The elf's ears flattened but he stood his ground. "She isn't yours, either. Come on, he's upstairs," he told Vedero, leading her back in over the threshhold.  
  
As soon as they were inside Vedero let out a pent-up sigh of relief, half-following and half-steering her erstwhile rescuer to the thankfully secluded corner that she, Mariän and Saru had staked out on their arrival. Both of them appeared to have vacated the table to dance (or rhapsodize about Amu Carcethlened with any semi-willing listener in Mariän's case) but their empty glasses seemed to have been a deterrent to any other sitters. "Thanks a lot," she started to say before taking in the greenish shade she could tell he had turned even in the patchily lit darkness. "Oh goddesses. Are you okay?"  
  
"I'm... fine, yes. I just wanted to make sure you were." He braced himself against the table, running a hand through his longish hair. "No one deserves Eshevis Tethimar."  
  
"I take it you have a history," Vedero said dryly.  
  
"If I didn't then I wouldn't be here by myself in the middle of the week," the elf said, almost to himself, before shaking his head with a jangle of multiple earrings. "Still, college was a while ago. Well, maybe not for you. Are you at Ashedro now?"  
  
"Yeah. Astrophysics doctoral program."  
  
"Goddesses. That is way outside my area of expertise." The elf extended a hand. "I'm Csevet, by the way. Csevet Aisava."  
  
Vedero returned her hand with considerably more warmth than her previous such gesture. "Vedero Drazhin. Nice to meet you."  
  
Csevet's ears and eyebrows shot up in unison. "Drazhin? Are you related to a Maia Drazhar, by and chance? Tall, mixed, nervous most of the time?"  
  
Vedero blinked. "That sounds like my little brother, all right. Are you a friend of his?"  
  
"We're dating. Kind of. It's... complicated."  
  
The thought of skinny, awkward Maia happily holding hands with the polished, composed elf in front of her drew a more genuine smile across Vedero's face than she'd expected to produce all evening. "This I've got to hear. You can tell me while I find my friends. I don't want them to run into that asshole either."  
  
***  
  
"Arrogant bitch," Eshevis raged to his table of similarly be-fedoraed hangers-on. "She's a solid six, she should be hanging off me! I've negged sevens into kiss-close in minutes without even going to kino and she holds off till that fucking marnis beta can drag her away?"  
  
"She's a marno whore. Who else would wear a hoodie to a club?" Solichel observed.  
  
"I'm telling you, bro, if you just tried to DHV harder you'd be pulling eights and up all the time," Ubezhar said.  
  
Eshevis ignored them both. "I was born in the wrong fucking century," he informed no one in particular. "If it were still feudal days I wouldn't even have to try. Modern women are such spoiled bitches you'd think they'd like a little negging just for the novelty."  
  
"Two words, bro," Ubezhar continued, equally oblivious: "Sharadansho. Fedora."


	4. Maia/Nurevis Chavar - Unrequited Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Nurevis has a (strong but secret!) crush on His Serenity. He flits around at his parties trying not to daydream about the shy emperor pounding him into a wall._

It starts with Nedaö Vechin, of course. Nurevis thinks it must be the object of the exotically beautiful young emperor's affections that must be capturing his attention at every party and salon he machinates for them both to attend. Though his own indiscretions are as varied as any others of his circle, flitting between sexes and lovers as indiscriminately as pairs of earrings, the realization that the beautiful, nervous grey shadow clothed in white that every courtier of his acquaintance either mocks or pities for his reception of his mother's looks has drawn his own lust is as surprising as it is gradual. The admiration of the jewel-bright curve of Min Vechin's ear becomes the appreciation of the Emperor's surprisingly delicate features, deepening into the gratification of longing every time he diplomatically, gratefully smiles at some story of Nurevis's or as Nurevis brings him a drink. Perhaps it may have begun as fraternal affection mixed with his father’s less-than-subtle encouragement to cultivate such a friendship but deepened through their continued acquaintance. Or perhaps it has laid waiting from the first for its chance to seize him with the strength of any torch he had ever carried for a more suitable conquest.

Whatever the case, parties have become the sweetest kind of torture imaginable. More and more see him returning to his rooms, alone or accompanied, to drift to sleep thinking of soft grey eyes and ugly, clever goblin hands. On at least one occasion he has excused himself to the most secluded corner he could find, unbuttoned his trousers and stroked himself to a hurried climax at the thought of meeting those wide, guileless grey eyes shamelessly from a seat astride Edrehasivar's hips, each stroke of his own provoking a breathless plea - _yes, oh, please, this is like nothing I have ever felt, take me deeper, oh, Nurevis, yes..._ His subsequent return, immaculate but with a quickness of breath and looseness of limb, provokes a certain amount of good-natured elbows and jibes from his social circle whom he has quickly schooled to surround the Emperor in a protective cloud of shallow hunting and fashion conversation whenever he looks out of his depth. He bears the ribbing with good-natured obfuscation and manages to keep all glances at his emperor completely incidental and neutral for the rest of the evening.

He is unaware as to his father's exact designs on the emperor he is meant to devote his life and soul to, though the civil servants Nurevis notes coming and going from the Chavada quarters with armfuls of legal precedents and Imperial genealogy charts suggest a number of unorthodox possibilities. Perhaps, he reflects to himself with an ironic quirk of his mouth, if his cousin Loran's marital prospects come to naught his father would approve of Nurevis insinuating the Chavada into Edrehasivar's closer confidence in a similar manner. He can hardly imagine his father disapproving of anything he did short of perhaps high treason so long as Nurevis is sufficiently discreet about it, and save in matters of trendsetting Nurevis is _always_ discreet.

Even now, as the two of them meander away from the harp recital and subsequent reception of the talented (if unrefined and divaish) Dach'osmin Hero Sevarin, the main barrier to Nurevis trailing the Emperor to his quarters and despoiling his frankly aphrodisiac innocence in every way Nurevis knows how is the presence of the scowling armsman and blankly staring maza who he does not doubt would not hesitate to gut him, forcibly still the motions of his heart, or both were he to make a single move in his Serenity's direction. "That was a pleasant evening," Edrehasivar states with typical dogged determination to fill a silence with any observation.

"We feel that your musical education at court would be best served by a variety of influences, much as you may favor one certain performer, Serenity." At the worried pen scratch that appears between the Emperor's eyes Nurevis softens the words with a smile and is rewarded by a brightening of Edrehasivar's features that is nothing less than perversely rewarding.

"You are... that is to say..." The Emperor sighs, nearly running an impatient hand through delicately looped braids fixed to other braids with milky-jeweled combs before recalling the intricacy that it would disturb. "What we mean to say is, we have appreciated your company this night, as ever.” How easy to draw that fine-boned form close and press their lips together, sucking the full lower one gently between his own until he felt Edrehasivar melt into him with the soft, needy whimpers of the innocent, rustic boy he had been raised, the kind Nurevis has tempted to his bed time after time.

"It is our pleasure, Serenity. We are only honored you pay us such tribute by responding to our invitations." Polite, generic and self-effacing to serve, with enough personal warmth to shine through the banality. Nurevis thinks he sees the armsman's scowl deepen even as Edrehasivar twists his fingers together under their burden of rings, fingers Nurevis has imagined breaching him, preparing him to be filled by his eager, dusky cock with the earnest, clumsy yet ever endearing grace with which the new Emperor does everything.

"Yes. Of course. We thank you, in any case." With a nod to his attendants the Emperor proceeds through the Alcethmaret grates with a nohecharis to each side, obviously caught up in whatever matters of state still await him. Nurevis turns from the portal back toward the Chavada apartments where he eats a late supper, bathes, takes a glass of cordial and only then retreats to his bed, allowing his half-hard cock to spring to a rigid erectness in his hand. With a voluptuous leisure he slowly strokes himself to the thought of heated, breathless moans in his ear from behind as the pretty, virginal Emperor presses Nurevis between himself and the nearest wall, gasping and fucking into him until shuddering and dying his little death still buried in Nurevis to the hilt. It is some time before he drifts off to sleep, hand and chest coated in a lacy pattern of his drying spend and heart still thudding in his ears.


	5. Maia/Csevet - Wingfic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Inspired in its entirety by shiftingpath's absolutely beautiful art which may be found[here:](http://shiftingpath.tumblr.com/post/140009899319/wingy-maia-i-had-a-lot-of-feels-with-myristica#notes)_

Maia draws a ragged breath as thin, clever fingers trace the arcing sweep of his wings in tandem. Csevet's face is buried in the space between left wing and left shoulder and it is all Maia can do to not furl them tight against his back as if enduring a youthful scolding from Setheris for some minor infraction, real or imagined.  
  
_Thy leathery flaps do thee as little credit as thy face,_ a sudden memory hisses with the voice of Setheris and at that Maia does draw his wings close, ears pinned. Csevet's fingers cease their slow progress along each side. "Maia?" he asks, stepping around to meet Maia's eyes from the front. His own wings, perfect elven ivory without a single vane out of place, rest easily behind him and Maia can hardly bear to look him in the eye.  
  
"Forgive me. I am... unused to this," Maia manages, eyes still downcast.  
  
Csevet steps in close, hands clasping his shoulders, fingertips resting just above where the pale, feathered roots of his wings merge with the dark skin of his back. His hair, loosed from combs and sticks but still braided, lies in heavy strands to either side of his shoulders and his skin prickles as Csevet gathers it back into a single mass, pressing it down his back between his wings. "I will not touch thee anywhere thou dost not wish it, Serenity. Maia." He blushes at the sudden formality and Maia cannot resist leaning close to kiss the bloom of sudden pink across each cheek.  
  
"I do wish it," he murmurs, and Csevet pulls close to him once again, hands shaping the feathered curves framing his head as skilfully as anything else Maia has ever seen those hands accomplish. "I only fear thou wilt find them as unlovely as I have ever found them to be."  
  
Csevet presses a kiss to the base of his neck, another along the sweep of his shoulder so that his elegant white head brushes the row of feathers at the front. He steps behind Maia once again and Maia cannot suppress a whimper at the loss of touch, only for it to deepen into a low, desperate moan at the feeling of Csevet's fingers _under his feathers,_ tracing the line halfway down the expanse of his wings where elven grey-white plumage meets goblin-black leather in a gesture so intimate that, to his shame, Maia feels tears spring to his eyes.  
  
"Thou hast ever been as lovely as any I have ever loved. Ever seen." Csevet's voice is soft in the half-darkness of the imperial chambers but sounds in Maia's ears like the roar of a storm. He buries his face once again in the left wing and Maia cries out at the press of his lips over the fan of feathers, offset by the clever, elegant hands still exploring the divide between feathers and skin. He is trembling now, at Csevet's touch, at the voice in his ears murmuring things he half-dreads to believe for fear of their turning untrue if he dares to. "Art like nothing I have ever seen before, in all thy dark slenderness and grace. To think of this being for me, to touch and hold and _take..._ it is a wonder I can accomplish any of the tasks thou dost set me, Serenity, for the temptation to touch thee. To merely look on thee."  
  
Maia's breath comes in ragged draws closer to sobs than inhalations. The thin membrane of his lower wings trembles with every touch of Csevet's fingers and he knows he has not much longer before the sheer tenderness and skill of those fingers overwhelms him completely. "Come. Please," he breathlessly gasps, turning to clasp Csevet to him before drawing him back to the expanse of imperial bed behind them. Lying back, Csevet on top of him, he arches up to draw Csevet in for a deep, slow kiss tinged with a taste of brine that lingers on Maia's lips from his still-wet eyes.  
  
"Spread thyself for me," Csevet whispers in his ear. Maia freezes, then complies with a slowly-drawn breath, raising himself up on his elbows to unfurl his wings completely across the undisturbed sheets, soft white-grey feathers and supple membrane framing him, accentuating his own nakedness so intimately that Maia cannot help but avert his eyes from Csevet's gaze.  
  
"Serenity," Csevet murmurs, two fingers under his chin drawing Maia's gaze back to his, and Maia reaches up to pull him close, open and bared and wanting as he has never wanted before. The moments melt into one another, pure bliss and sensation merging with breathless apprehension of the entirely new and novel until Maia allows himself to be lost to the joining of two bodies, reveling in the feeling of the tips of Csevet's own unfurled wings brushing his in an embrace as intimate as that of their bodies.


	6. Csevet/Cala/Beshelar - Size Kink/Humiliation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _We utterly love the "Beshelar's HUEG COCK" trope. We would like more of this, but we would like also the inclusion of a social aesthetic preference for smaller, elegant dicks (see: Renaissance paintings)._
> 
> _Basically, we are really looking for someone to be horrified/shocked/repulsed yet fascinated and helplessly aroused by Beshelar's "ugly" monster cock. Wild sex ensues._

 

"There's something half bestial about it." From behind Beshelar, Csevet's voice was a series of low vibrations along the length of his ear, sending a shudder of near-painful sensation through the straining monstrosity between his legs. "Think'st this is truly what all his rigid propriety is in aid of? To keep from letting this—" (a stroke of three fingers along the tender underside of the shaft that forced a gasp from Beshelar's throat) "drive him to the most depraved of acts?"

"Certain schools of physiognomic science would indeed suggest so," Cala replied from his position crouched between Beshelar's legs at the foot of the bed. Queue undone, neck of his robe half-open to expose an inviting view of his chest, Beshelar could hardly look upon him without the desire to commit any of the filth they had accused him of since the topic had, so to speak, come up. "From a purely aesthetic perspective it's hideous, but the sheer... possibility gives it a certain appeal. Has anyone, man or woman, ever fancied being spitted on this horror, Deret?"

"Even the most debauched courier would think twice before spreading his legs for such a thing. Or hers," Csevet replied before Beshelar could gather his thoughts sufficiently for a response. He slid a hand down Beshelar’s bared chest to just above the mass of snowy curls from which the organ in question jutted grotesquely, provoking another soft groan. “Well? How many hast thou had?”

“None!” Beshelar felt his ears fall with shame in direct contrast to the renewed stiffening of his prick at the words. “Our—“ Cala’s sharp pinch to his inner thigh made him cry out, and he amended: “ _my_ training never allowed me enough proximity to women to try, and in the barracks if I was not laughed at I was ever relegated to the passive role for the other’s fear that I might harm him.”

“To take the innocence of a nohecharis,” Csevet breathed, fingers tracing deliciously intricate patterns over Beshelar’s thighs. “I never would have thought my life would have brought me to such a place.”

Cala glanced up in only slightly theatrical surprise. “Dost not truly mean to let him have thee?”

Against the small of his back Deret felt Csevet’s own prick, as slender and elegant as the rest of him, sympathetically twitch at the words. “I do. But I imagine the preparation will take some time. Hast any oil or the like?”

Cala drew a small, stoppered bottle from a robe pocket. He handed the vial to Csevet, who leaned forward to switch places with Beshelar, urging him up the bed until his head rested near the wall and Csevet sat up to straddle his hips. As Beshelar watched, he liberally coated two fingers before spreading his legs to slide them inside himself with a motion that made Beshelar emit a strangled noise of desire. “Prepare thyself as well,” Csevet instructed.

Beshelar obediently dipped his own fingers into the vial, stroking himself slowly with motions that turned eager and quick as he watched a third finger disappear into Csevet’s arse, followed by, with a grimace and a twist of his arm, a fourth. “And still I feel so unprepared,” he said with a wry twist of his mouth. “Surely this will be as informative a scholarly exercise for thee as for myself, Cala.”

“I will eagerly document thy progress, and his,” Cala replied, a slight hitch in his breath at the sight of Csevet’s attentions to himself that anyone but one who spent twelve hours a day in his presence would hardly have noticed. Past Csevet’s shoulder he could only watch as Cala rose to sit behind Csevet near the foot of the bed. He undid the sash of his robe, allowing it to fall from his shoulders and pool around his lower body like a woodblock print of a refined woman bathing and not a gawky, somewhat unlovely academic.

With a strength aided by Beshelar’s own helpless arousal, Csevet pushed him back by the shoulders onto the single pillow at the head of the bed. Grasping the wrist-thick base of Beshelar’s cock in one hand, Csevet straddled his hips before, with a deep, measured breath, raising himself to position the tip against the hot slickness of his entrance. Another breath and he was sinking slowly, agonizingly slowly, with a grimace of pain as the swell of the head breached the tender ring of flesh inside him. “Deret… oh, merciful goddesses, it hurts, it— _ah_!” A violent shudder and Csevet bucked against him hard, obviously feeling something he enjoyed even as he did his utmost to admit the remaining inches. The pleasure mixed with pain contorting his features, his soft gasps at the wreck of his hot, clinging hole, each sent a ripple of arousal through Beshelar’s loins. _Perhaps you are the brute your physiognomy suggests,_ he thought, unable to keep from reveling in his own degradation. Cala, meanwhile, positioned himself behind Csevet, trailing kisses over his back and arms until Csevet appeared to relax somewhat. Nimble fingers glided up and down the shaft with every lift and drop of Csevet’s hips until, with a final, soft whimper, Csevet impaled himself fully onto the jutting organ. “I wonder if this tightness pains him more than it does me,” he remarked, half breathless and half wry, with a turn to accept a soft press of Cala’s lips to his.

“I wonder that thou canst move thyself at all with that thing buried in thee,” Cala said. The catch in his voice was more obvious now, and Beshelar could not suppress a groan at the thought of what he might be doing behind Csevet.

“A wide variety of lovers has helped, though none near so particularly… endowed.” The complete lack of attention granted him by either lover made Beshelar writhe in humiliated desire. From astride him, Csevet had begun to rock his hips in a circular motion, moaninging and clutching at Beshelar’s shoulders with every thrust. “That something so repulsive might feel so good inside… goddesses, it’s like the root of a tree. And fits on a man’s body with roughly the same grace and visual appeal.”

“I am hardly an authority on thy level and I would tend to agree,” replied Cala. “Though having seen his Serenity in the various states of dishabille we have been privileged to witness I feel myself better schooled in masculine perfection than most.”

Csevet’s groan at the words nearly drowned out Beshelar’s incoherent noise of protest at such an invocation of his—their—liege. “Tell me,” Csevet begged, craning his neck around for another kiss, which Cala—fondling himself openly at the sight, Beshelar now saw, one bony hand wrapped around the base of his own shaft—followed with a slow, sensuous pass of his tongue along the length of Csevet’s ear.

“To see him undressed—the man is like a statue in onyx. Thou’rt not far from his build, though with his goblin blood he stands somewhat taller and broader than thee.” Another wet, urgent kiss passed between the two and it was all Beshelar could do to not humiliate himself still further with a climax mere seconds from the full penetration. “He is slender, but not a stick insect like me, nor with any soft part to him, even from the luxuries to which he has slowly become accustomed. As to his intimate parts... ah! Even we have only seen him erect on a handful of occasions, but he is as elegant there as in every other quality. To think of that beauty, that exotic grace, compared to this—“

Cala may have spoken further but with the scornful pinch that Cala imparted on his other thigh, thumb then grazing the underside of the heavy mass of his sac, Beshelar was lost. He managed—barely—to muffle any sort of cry with the practice of one accustomed to self-abuse in crowded army quarters, to thoughts of something more satisfying than a hand in the dark. Something as good as the slick tightness that drew his climax from him in shuddering, wringing jets that obliged him, _forced_ him to grasp Csevet’s hips and _thrust._ Some remote part of his mind registered Csevet’s pitiful cries of mingled pain and enjoyment, felt the touch of seed across his bare chest, allowed him to inch his eyes open to sharpen the last aftershocks of his climax with the sight of the beginning of Csevet’s own. “Thou... thou’lt kill me, it’s too big, I’ll be split in two, oh, goddesses, Deret, it hurts,” Csevet whimpered, each eager answering roll of his hips giving the lie to his protestations, and Beshelar willed himself to continue long past his own end until Csevet lay draped across him in a limp, sweat-damp heap.

Behind him, Cala choked “Deret—Csevet—gods, the pair of you—“ and followed suit, hips jerking like a graceless dancer’s as he spent into his own hand. Beshelar made as if to get to his feet but any aspirations toward putting the bed in order were stymied by Cala’s sudden accompanying weight on his other side. “I hope,” Cala murmured, not opening his eyes, “thou found’st that satisfactory?”

“Yes,” Beshelar managed.

“I wasn’t addressing thee, thou deviant,” Cala said with an echo of affection to his words. He reached up to loose Beshelar’s hair from the last vestiges of its topknot, spilling ivory locks across his shoulders with a feeling like the whisper of silk. “I know thou didst. But I am glad, regardless.”

“I found it very satisfactory,” Csevet replied, voice slightly muffled by Beshelar’s shoulder. “I’ve never known any man to enjoy such disparagement of his anatomy, but I can hardly complain. I would, however, encourage thee to impart further details to me of his Serenity's perfection by comparison.”

Beshelar groaned with renewed desire, feeling his loins stir despite his exhaustion. Over his chest, Cala and Csevet shared a wicked look.


	7. Beshelar/Maia, oaths of fealty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beshelar trying to recite the oaths he made when he swore himself to Maia's service and he's not allowed to come until he says them perfectly, but Maia is riding his cock SO GOOD and...

  "Here do we... ah... swear our troth to His Imperial Serenity Edrehasivar VII, Ethuverazhid Zhas, to defend his person with the..." A groan like pain tore itself from Beshelar's throat as the Emperor in question sank down once again onto Beshelar’s aching cock. The tight, clinging heat, the way Edrehasivar caught his bottom lip in his teeth in a joining of pain and pleasure at the violation, was in itself enough to have dragged Beshelar screaming to his crisis minutes before if not for the litany he imposed over all other thoughts. He swallowed hard and continued, “…the sacred trust of our life. We submit to his judgement—“

  
Thick, gentle fingers brushed the side of his face in something less than a reprimand but more than a caress. “I think thou’st missed a line.”

Beshelar winced, forcing himself to reprise the lines in his mind. “To defend his person with the sacred trust of our life, and the persons of those bound to his by blood or law save in the case that such persons should act against him. We submit to his judgement and benevolence, first among his subjects… ohsweetgods,” he gasped as Edrehasivar (Maia) began to ride him with an exquisite slowness, hands grasping his shoulders, tendrils of black framing the beautiful agony of his face. _The stipulation “until the hour of our death” has less meaning when thou’rt near to making him expire where he lies, Serenity,_ Cala had observed at one point, but despite the Emperor’s scandalized laughter and protests of no such intention Beshelar knew that Cala was right. He could die so in truth, in the arms of his Emperor, and he would welcome such a death.

The oath was the only thing between him and complete impropriety—not the impropriety of what was required of him by his liege, but the ever-present temptation to lose himself in his own pleasure, ignoring the needs of that liege. Even when Maia—Edrehasivar—innocently pushed him toward the brink of what he could endure, leaving him balanced on the knife's edge as now, he could not risk disregarding his Emperor (or, gods forfend, hurting him.) By rights it should have been him in the passive role, and at times it was, though even then the feeling of the Emperor's fingers opening him, his cock filling him, was enough to reduce him to hissing the oath under his breath over and over before the Emperor had even come close to his own climax. But at other times, those times that Maia ( _it is only proper to use his true name intimately, surely_ ) climbed astride him, thighs warm on his and hole slick with whatever unguent he had applied to it, murmuring _please, take me, it feels so good inside of me, please, Beshelar_ then he could not help but voice the words aloud, sometimes rasping them through gritted teeth, occasionally crying the last words out as his little death finally claimed him.

Once Maia had realized what it was he was doing, a precedent was established with some gentle suggestion from the currently sleeping Cala. Beshelar was prohibited from climax until such time as the oath was completed, the affirmation of the pledge made so long ago overcoming his shame at lusting after the Emperor of the Ethuveraz as though he were no different than any other pretty youth. It was perverse, and despite the Empress’s good nature regarding the arrangement, abetting adultery. Still, to withhold the affection, closeness and touch that Maia needed so badly and that they were both so eager to give would have been far the worse abandonment of duty. Realizing that he had fallen silent, Beshelar dug his nails into his palms, hastening on with “…first among his subjects, with the obligation and privilege of that office. This we swear before the tightest—“

Maia burst into helpless laughter as Beshelar considered reaching for one of the pillows behind them and mercifully suffocating himself. “’The tightest authority of the Ethuveraz?' I'm not sure that's taken into account for rulership.”

“Oh sweet gods. Serenity, please, forgive me. Let me begin again. Here do we swear our—“

“Beshelar! It’s all right.” Maia brushed his hand over Beshelar’s brow with a tenderness that made Beshelar simultaneously want to arch into the touch and bury his face in the coverlet in shame. “Continue from where thou wert.”

“This we swear before the _highest_ authority of the Ethuveraz, before the princes and counselors of the land.” As always, the Emperor was far more merciful than he deserved. Beshelar knew full well that if it pleased him, if Beshelar stumbled over the words or made any more such ridiculous errors, then Maia could remove himself, compelling Beshelar to service him with mouth or hands before sending him from the Alcethmeret with orders not to touch himself until such time as it pleased Maia to grant him release. The thought sent a desperate swell of pleasure through his groin and thighs and it was all he could do to keep from climax at the mere thought of his lord’s mercy withheld. “Before those who govern and… ahhh… their subjects, we pledge to honor the ruler of both governor and governed, keeping him unharmed and hale in the members of his body and the faculties of his mind, from now until the hour of our death.”

It would have been very poetic to say that this mention of death brought his own, but Beshelar had never been one for poetic responses to life, even desperate for release as he was. Instead he grasped Maia’s shaft in his hand, allowing the Emperor to thrust forward into the tightness of his closed fist even as he reproached himself mentally for not having done so before. A stroke of his hand, then another, and Maia cried out and spasmed bodily as his seed began to spatter across Beshelar's chest. "Beshelar... oh gods, say it if thou wilt, but let go, spend for me," he gasped.

"Here do we swear our troth to His Imperial Serenity—" The rest was lost in a groan of agonized ecstasy as Beshelar's climax burned through him like the holy flame of Anmura until it was all he could do to continue his attentions to Maia's cock. The benevolence, the sheer goodness of the lord to whom he was pledged sharpened each shudder of pleasure into something like pain. He served, he served well, he served one who cared for him as reciprocally as ever lord had ever cared for retainer, and more. He returned to earth with Maia draped over him, arms encircling his shoulders like sheltering walls, their hearts beating in gradually slowing time. "Serenity," he concluded, voice low, hands cupping Maia's hips.

"Lieutenant." A small sigh from the Emperor, and there was nothing more to say, not in that moment with bodies entwined as surely as lives and fates. It was easy, like this, to let go, drifting into slumber in the knowledge of the mutual devotion Beshelar had so gradually come to accept. To _allow_ himself to accept. In the bed and the arms of his Emperor, Lieutenant Deret Beshelar, First Nohecharis to His Imperial Serenity Edrehasivar VII Zhas, sank into the oblivion that awaited them both.


	8. Pornographic Novels 1: Varet, Islo Vereilin, EdhVII 503

_"Greedy little courier slut," Karthivel purred. With the tip of his tongue he licked a trail from the tip of Varet's ear to its base and Varet shuddered, all too aware of the outline of the duke's cockstand pressing into the cleft of his buttocks. "Art as hungry as the rest of thy brethren in the fleet, we see, despite all thy pleas."_  
  
"S-stop. Please, dach'osmer," Varet begged. "I'll leave without pay, I'll do whatever it is you want, only - "  
  
Karthivel's hand, ringed with tiger's eye and amber that brightened the grey wash of his skin, cupped the rigid length of Varet's cock with eager fingers and Varet moaned. "How my cock excites thee," Karthivel murmured. The velvet of his voice stroked over Varet's skin like a caress itself. "Art imagining how it will feel when I breach thy hole with it? When I fill thee with my seed like a dog with a bitch in rut?" Hands braced themselves on each inner thigh, gold-lacquered nails digging in just hard enough to feel through trouser fabric, and Varet whimpered once again. "Speak truthfully, or it will go badly for thee."  
  
"Y-yes, lord," Varet moaned. Surely this could not truly be happening. He would wake momentarily in Cetho, his history as a morally upright and worthy appendage of the courier service intact, unsullied by handsome and ruthless nobility. He dug his nails into his hands and no awakening came.  
  
Suddenly, his trousers were around his knees. "Or perhaps thou wouldst prefer to have this shapely little arse readied first,' Karthivel mused. "A round with the birch or the belt might do well to banish the rest of thy reticence. We find that pain sharpens the pleasure of a good fuck wonderfully, whether received or given." He slapped the curve of Varet's arse and Varet yelped, more with surprise than with pain. "Cry out prettily for me, and perhaps I will reward thee. Such a sweet toy thou art, enough to despoil until thou weep'st - "   
  
Mariän glanced up from the page, her face roughly the same color as the carnelian drops in her ears. "Islo, this is incredible. How long did it take thee to type all of this?" she asked the handsome woman of about fifty who occupied the teahouse table opposite her.  
  
Islo dropped a cup of sugar into her cup and swirled it about thoughtfully. "Three hours or so, though some of that was interspersed with cooking and shooing away the cats when they tried to jump on it. Perhaps two and a half, all told."  
  
"I don't think I could transcribe this much in two hours with shorthand, let alone in any fit state to be read," Mariän replied, thumbing through the sheaf of pages she had been handed. "I wonder if there's room in _my_ household budget for a tachigraph. Think of how many more copies we might have to distribute in the future if we had a few to share amongst ourselves. It would be almost as good as having our own press!"  
  
"This modern age is truly a wonder of convenience," Islo replied with a sage nod. "Perhaps one day we might find some suitable means of thanking the inventor of such a device."  
  
"What, like a compendium of all the tawdry novels it's allowed us to produce? Bound and tastefully illustrated?"  
  
Islo grinned wickedly. "Exactly."


	9. Pornographic Novels 2: The Opera Singer's Seduction, Lisethu Hipeth, EdhVII 1009

_Had the jewels in her hair been paste, her paint brighter and more garish, the glimpses she caught of herself in the mirror might simply have been herself after a third curtain call. She could see traces of kohl decorating the delicate skin under her eyes and there was a smudge of crimson at the corner of her mouth which she quickly smoothed away, but apart from that it had endured the meal well. "Will you take down our hair?" Eno asked the edocharo.  
  
The girl rewarded her with a dip of her head. "The dach'osmer has requested that you keep it up, min Videzhen."  
  
Eno thought of smudges of paint on the bedclothes, opals and gilded combs scattered over the floor, before mentally rolling her eyes at her own ignorance. Surely the Adranada had people to clean the rooms of scions with such proclivities. She hazarded a glance at the bed's reflection in the mirror, briefly imagining herself and Adrana entangled there..._  
  
The unoiled hinges of the shop door sounded and Keter slid the novel under the bolt of blue felt that lay on the counter between her and her first customer of the day. She vaguely recognized the petite osmerrem, hurrying into the back to produce the bronze-and-green silk monstrosity she had ordered the previous week. For a moment she mused vaguely on how well the otherwise odd colors would look with the oserrem's complexion before handing it off to the maid who seemed to be a bulwark against her mistress speaking to or noticing anyone below her station. The other half of the payment secreted in the lockbox at her feet, Keter resumed her position behind the felt.  
  
 _..."Sing," Adrana (Eno could still not think of him as Miris) urged. He parted the delicate flesh of her nether lips with two fingers before slipping his tongue between them, and Eno cried out despite herself. It was not difficult, even so, to draw breath, to close her eyes and imagine the bright stage hangings around her as she launched herself into the first aria that came to mind. Birds in flight, soaring over an expanse of snow in a series of lilting chords that wavered only faintly with each stroke of her lover's tongue, spilled from her own lips like roses thrown from the seats by an adoring yet fickle public. If her inhalations were breathier, her projection less than it might have been even for the close chamber, who would know? Her teachers were not here, her sole audience's attention firmly divided between her song and the sweetness between her legs.  
  
Notes built on notes, the flock crested the highest clouds over snow-sparkling mountains, and with a choked, gasping cry Eno felt the shuddering tremor of a plucked harp string course through her..._  
  
This time Keter was ready for the squeak of the door. The neatly-dressed maid (clearly the servant of someone better-heeled than the last client, to be sent on the errands of someone too rich and important to do them herself) received a tall, almost-sheer confection of laze and periwinkle gauze. A style popular with those who refused to acknowledge the waning popularity of simple hair ornamentation for public wear - perhaps the lady in question was too old to be running her own errands in any case. A few words about the weather and the resulting condition of the streets, the clink of coins in the lockbox, and Keter was behind the counter once more.  
  
 _..."Had I the means," Adrana panted, "I would keep thee so, in the utmost luxury. A cage too tall and wide for thee to see the gilded bars."  
  
"Yet still a cage." His braids, still fastened with their filigree rings, whipped over Eno's back in a glissando of pain that made her tighten around him.  
  
"No different a cage than any of us occupy." Perfectly manicured hands were suddenly at her shoulders, drawing her up until she knelt upright on the bed before the mirror. Behind her, Adrana's huff of breath at the sight suggested he was close, near to overwhelmed completely. "We live apart, only to meet... ahh... so in darkness, to love in darkness... oh, Eno, my inspiration, my nightingale, to have been so blessed with thee renders me free from it all, if only when we may meet to dance so - " A gasp, a sudden emptiness, and Eno felt the hot, copious spill of his issue over her back and thighs..._  
  
Keter glanced up in alarm at a sudden footstep only to relax almost immediately. "If hastn't read this one already I would recommend it. There's enough description of jewels and clothing to impress whoever wrote _The Contradiction of Nature,_ " she informed the thin elf girl across the counter.  
  
Ebrean Narchanezhen ('no relation, we swear,') lowered her basket of silk flowers and lace ribbons on a bench next to the workroom door. "Is thy mother paying thee to sit here reading such filth?" she asked with a teasing smile.  
  
"She thinks having someone at the counter at all times makes us look sophisticated." Keter held the book open in Ebrean's direction. "She set me to sorting buttons as well, but I can sort the number she gave me in under an hour. What think'st?"  
  
Opening the slender volume to a page near the beginning, Ebrean near-immediately flushed with a twitch of her ears. "I think I wonder how thou canst sit her perfectly casually reading such a thing. Doesn't anyone notice?"  
  
"I've grown quite practiced at affecting a neutral face since I've been set to watching the counter every day for three months in a row." Keter grinned. "How else think'st I've begun to beat thee so easily at cards?"


	10. Pornographic Novels 3:The Blue Orchid, Deran Hakaran, EdhVII, 5010

_"I am no prize for thee to have won, even with thine own bravery and gallantry." Beneath her robe's shabby blue cloth, Idro was quite clearly naked, sash loose enough to reveal a pale curve of decolletage that made Thanu blush and glance away, only to feel his chin cupped by slim fingers, his gaze drawn back to meet hers. "Nor do I offer myself as a mere trophy for thy bravery. I offer thee the comfort of one creature to another, if only for this night._

_How tempting to grasp that hand in his, pulling her close to taste those delicate, death-dealing lips. "I could never claim thee as mine," Thanu said, all too aware of the weight of so many nights of unspent seed between his legs. "Thou art thine own, hast ever been ere I knew thee. Yet for thee to yield thy virtue to such as myself—"_

_Then her lips here on his, her hand still cupping his chin as her other flew to the carefully gathered mass of his hair. A twitch of her fingers and the ribbon that bound it was not so much undone as gone, leaving Thanu's tight, pale curls spilled around his shoulders, similarly bared with the merest brush of her touch. The neck of her robe had fallen open, Thanu noticed vaguely, and he reached up to reverently brush the full curve of her breasts in turn provoking a breathy gasp—_

The door swung open and Beshelar drew up his knees with a mental curse. How did the blasted maza move so quietly?

"Art well?" Cala asked, pausing with a glance at Beshelar's position and no doubt disheveled appearance.

"I had understood," Beshelar fumbled, "that thou wouldst be visiting thy fellows longer, and saw no reason to remain awake as such." As soon as the lie had left his mouth he realized the candle burning beside his bedside hardly suggested sleep and mentally slapped himself.

If Cala noticed, however, he did not appear to care. "We adjourned early to allow ourself time for rest," he replied. He began to remove his robe and Beshelar glanced hurriedly away at the thought of Idro Athmaza's similar state before inwardly cringing once again.

 _Art not some blushing maid,_ he scolded himself, forcing himself to glance back toward his half-clad partner. "I will put the candle out if thou wouldst prefer," he said.

Cala shrugged. "Keep it burning if thou wilt, we've hardly a tight budget for candles. What is't art reading?" he asked with a glance toward the book mostly concealed in Beshelar's lap.

"Nothing. Excuse me." Clad only in breeches, and entirely thankful that he had not had the time to reach the truly stimulating portions of the novel, Beshelar hurried toward the relative privacy of his and Cala's shared washroom. He stashed the book in the small, locking chest near the tub in which he kept his personal effects before splashing his face with cold water from the washstand, trying to put the conflated images of the fictional Idro's bared breasts and the all-too-real Cala's lanky grace out of his mind.


End file.
